Elliptical Trainers Rock

Ellipticals rock...no impact, no back pain, quiet, and judging by the feeling in my legs, they are a hell of a workout too. I haven't used one for the better part of 6 weeks, so this feeling is altogether new to me...again.

Diet goes well, I'm doing much better at it (albeit a bit obsessive) than I figured one could do on a diet started the week before Christmas. People called me crazy, and maybe they were a bit right, but the day before I started this diet, something clicked. I suddenly became tired of talking about doing this and decided that the time for talk was over and it was time to take action. People ask what diet I am doing, but it's not really one of these gimmick diets that have a name, so I guess it would be called My Diet. My Diet is a culmination of about 6 months of research on many health and fitness websites, in addition to several body building websites. My goal is an overall reduction in body fat % (or a more "cut" look for those of you familiar with body building lingo). I'm not so much shooting for a weight reduction, but I'm sure that will happen (it already has). So 2 weeks and 2 days into it, the scale hasn't really budged much (3-5 lbs), but something has. I can tell a difference when I put clothes on now; the pants have a little more room around the waist.

For anyone interested, here's how My Diet goes (after a little background):

First, I found a good BMR Calculator (Basal Metabolic Rate, the number of calories to intake for your body to break even, i.e. maintain your weight, every day) and found this number to be around 2,500 for me (it's a little high because I've been weightlifting and doing cardio regularly for quite some time now).

So, with that number in mind, here's what my "diet" looks like:
Daily Calorie Intake: 2,000, monitored strictly, I have a notebook I write everything I eat in. My Carb/Protein/Fat ratio is about 45/35/20, with no more than 10% coming from saturated fat. This seems to be the "ideal" balance based on my research. What this means is on a daily basis, 900 calories will come from carbs (about 225g), 700 from protein (175g), and 400 from fat(about 45g). I got these numbers from the following: 1g carb = 4 calories, 1g protein = 4g calories, 1 fat = 9 calories.
Lots of water everyday (about a gallon on an average day)
Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday - cardio activity: 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer
Monday/Wednesday/Friday - weightlifting

At the end of the day, I add everything up, calculate the percentages, and adjust accordingly. I don't have any foods explicitly restricted from this diet, but some are off limits just by nature (aka fast foods, and most things from the freezer section at the grocery store are the worst). Some are "discretionary", like 1 or 2 time a week foods, like red meat (tends to have tons of protein, but lots of fat)

So that's my diet, and it feels like it's working so far, only time will tell though. Here are some links I used during my research for those of you interested, your mileage may vary:

Men's Fitness
Men's Health
Bodybuilding.com
ExRx.net

Later!